Scholarly Communication and Publishing Issues

What You Can Do: Copyright Guidelines: Contracts for Stanford Authors with Publishers — Things to Consider

Instead of automatically accepting standard publishers’ contracts requiring the transfer of
copyright and all rights to the publisher, consider negotiating contracts that permit continued
academic use of the work by the creator and his or her university.

The Academic Council Committee on Libraries (C-LIB), in its 2003/04 Annual Report, noted
the three following advisory points:

Stanford authors should retain the right to use their published article in whole or in part in any
course reader, syllabus or course web site for courses taught by their institution with
attribution to the publishing journal

Stanford authors should retain the right to reuse their published article in any derived work with
attribution to the publishing journal

Stanford authors should retain the right to mount the published copies of their articles on their personal or
departmental web sites with attribution to the publishing journal

Suggested draft language to use in contracts has been developed by several organizations:

This addendum modifies the terms of the publishing agreement referenced above. Notwithstanding any term
in that agreement to contrary, the parties hereby agree that with respect to the work that:

The Author shall, without limitation, have the right to use, reproduce, distribute, update, create
derivatives, and make copies of the work (electronically or in print) in connection with the Author’s
teaching, conference presentations, lectures, other scholarly works, and professional activities.

The Author’s home institution shall, without limitation, have the right to use, reproduce, distribute,
and make copies of the work (electronically or in print) in connection with teaching, digital
repositories, conference presentations, lectures, other scholarly works, and professional activities
conducted at the Author’s home institution with the Author’s written permission.

Creative Commons provides guidance on the range of options for choosing which rights to retain. Its
Choose License page
assists in this process and also links further to both “human readable summaries” and the
legal code of the full licenses.